The present invention relates to the internet arts. It finds particular application to a method and system for internationalizing internet domain names such that a non-compliant international domain name can be processed by the existing internet structure.
With the proliferation and extremely fast adoption of the Internet around the globe, the need for international capabilities on the Net has become a matter of absolute necessity. A lot of work has been done so far on the subject of localization of scripts and the internationalization (I18N) of systems. However, up to this date, the Internet has remained more associated and very tightly dependent upon the English language since the current Domain Name System (DNS) is presently restricted to the monocase 7 bit ASCII English language alphabet.
The Domain Name System is the part of the Internet infrastructure that translates human-readable domain names into the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers needed to establish TCP/IP communication over the Internet. So far, existing domain name server systems accept only domain names according to RFC1035. RFC1035 specifies the alphabet (set of allowed symbols), the syntax and all restrictions for permissible/valid domain names. Currently, only A to Z upper case, a to z lower case, the xe2x80x9c-xe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9c.xe2x80x9d are permitted.
There have been proposals which suggest changing the domain name server system to accommodate I18N. While the proposed solution could work, it requires major changes to the Internet as it exists today. Domain name servers around the globe, which number in the thousands, would have to be changed or updated. In the meantime, existing domain name servers would not be able to handle the new queries sent to them by I18N-enabled domain name servers. Results of these I18N queries can vary anywhere from single rejection to a complete crash of the non-enabled domain name servers.
The present invention provides a solution to this problem in that the present invention would allow users of the Internet to use international domain names mainly in their own script or characters. The present invention works with the existing domain name servers around the world and does not require any updates to be applied to these servers nor any changes to be made to their configurations.
The present invention provides a new and unique method and system for internationalizing domain names which cures the above problems and others.
In accordance with the present invention, a method of converting an internet international domain name to an RFC1035 compliant format is provided. The international domain name includes non-English characters which are RFC1035 non-compliant. The international domain name is intercepted and transformed to an RFC1035 compliant domain name. A redirector string is appended to the compliant domain name where the redirector string directs resolution of the RFC1035 compliant domain name to a domain name server.
In accordance with a more limited aspect of the present invention, the intercepting is transparent to the user and occurs on a user""s computer.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a method for enabling a user device to be connected to an Internet address where a domain name request originates in a non-compliant format is provided. The non-compliant domain name request is transformed to a converted domain name in a compliant format where the transforming is transparent to a user. A redirector string is automatically appending to the transformed compliant domain name which includes information for directing the compliant domain name to a domain name server that resolves the compliant domain name such that the user device is connected to an Internet address corresponding to the compliant domain name.
In accordance with a more limited aspect of the present invention, the redirector string is automatically generated.
One advantage of the present invention is that international domain names are converted to a compliant format such that current domain name servers do not have to be modified in order to accept international domain names.
Another advantage of the present invention is that transformation of a domain name and generation of the redirector information is performed prior to being received by a domain name server.
Another advantage of the present invention is that the domain name transformation allows for a reverse look-up transformation such that an IP number can be reverse transformed to obtain its corresponding international domain name.
Still further advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.